NSW election 2015: Economy poses regional risk factor for Baird

One of the greatest slogans in the lexicon of modern politics is, "It's the economy, stupid".

It was coined by political strategist James Carville while working on Bill Clinton's successful 1992 US presidential campaign.

With America slowly recovering from the early 1990s recession, the slogan was designed as a reminder for campaign staff to keep their focus on tapping into the concerns of voters that had been created by the preceding period of economic uncertainty.

In good economic times voters will shift their focus to other issues, until economic times become too good and 'cost of living' and 'inflation' start to become important.

In bad economic times, the overwhelming issue becomes the economy, along with related issues like 'jobs'.

The question clearly elicited different responses depending on the partisanship of voters. At 34.6 per cent among Coalition voters, the economy was clearly the most important issue. It rated far less highly among other voters, with only 5.8 per cent of Labor voters naming the economy and 4.2 per cent of Green voters.

However, it is not just a matter of whether voters name the economy as the most important issue. Equally important can be how well people feel the economy is performing.

In the first week of NSW Vote Compass, we added a question of the day to try to measure respondents' perception of the economy.

The question was: "How do you feel the economy in your electorate is doing now as compared to 12 months ago?"

From a sample of 18,146 respondents, the overall figure pointed to calm economic times for the state.

Across the state, 49 per cent of respondents thought their local economy was about the same as 12 months ago, 20 per cent thought it somewhat or much better and 30 per cent somewhat or much worse.

Overall this a very slight negative rating but not so negative as to cause concern for the Baird government.

As you might expect in a time when the Coalition is in government, Coalition supporters thought the economy was generally better while Labor and Green supporters thought it was doing worse.

Forty-eight per cent of both Labor and Coalition supporters stated that the economy was about the same as 12 months ago. Coalition partisans rated it better 35 per cent to 17 per cent worse, while Labor partisans were more pessimistic, only 7% rating the economy better compared to 48% worse.

Green voters were stronger for the status quo, with 57 per cent stating the economy was the same as 12 months ago, 9 per cent plumping for better and 34 per cent for worse.

The most interesting finding from the question concerns how respondents rated the economy based on where they lived. Voters in Sydney were clearly more positive about the economy than voters in regional and rural parts of the state.

More than 50 per cent of voters in inner and outer Sydney selected 'about the same as twelve months ago' as their rating of the economy, compared to 44 per cent in the Hunter and Illawara regions, and in regional seats.

However, there were significant differences between Sydney and the rest of the state on whether the economy had changed.

In inner Sydney, 25 per cent of voters rated the economy as better compared to 23 per cent saying it was worse; in outer Sydney it was 22 per cent better to 26 per cent worse.

But voters elsewhere in the state were much more negative.

In the Hunter and Illawarra, only 14 per cent of respondents rated the local economy as better than 12 months ago, compared to 42 per cent who thought it was worse.

It was the same in country and regional seats, where 15 per cent rated the economy as better compared to 41 per cent thinking it worse.

Will this be a significant factor at the election? Are the boom times in Sydney, driven in part by rising land prices, hiding a less rosy economic picture in the rest of the state?

While the Liberal Party did well in the Hunter Valley at the 2011 election, the loss of many local Liberal MPs over revelations at the ICAC inquiry was always likely to sink Liberal hopes of winning more than one Hunter seat at the 2015 election.

What will be of greater concern to the Coalition, and particularly the National Party, will be the negative perceptions of the economy in the rest of the state, away from the central urban areas, where all seats are currently held by the Coalition.

On the electoral pendulum the Coalition partners hold these seats with massive margins. However, those margins were inflated in 2011 by Labor's abandonment of local campaigning in seats it could not win.

It has always been expected there would be a big swing back to Labor outside of Sydney in 2015. The simple return of a more normal political contest ensured that.

What the Vote Compass results on the performance of the economy reveal are that there are generally negative perceptions in country and regional seats on the performance of the economy.

At the recent Queensland election, perceptions of a weak economy in the north of the state fed into the swing against the Newman government and delivered all the state's northern metropolitan seats back into the hands of Labor.

What the Vote Compass data reveals is that while overall NSW voters think the economy is doing well, country and regional voters are much more negative, and that could spell problems for the Baird Government.

Where do you stand? Use Vote Compassto find out how your views compare to the NSW political parties' policies.

FAQ

What is Vote Compass?

The ABC launched Vote Compass NSW on Sunday March 1 in the lead-up to the state election on March 28.

It is a tool that allows voters to see how their views compare to the parties' policies.

The data was weighted across a range of demographic factors using the latest population estimates to be a true representation of opinion at the time of the field.

The findings are based on 18,146 respondents to Vote Compass from March 2 to March 5, 2015.

Vote Compass is not a random sample. Why are the results being represented as though it is a poll?

Vote Compass is not a poll. It is fundamentally an educational tool intended to promote electoral literacy and stimulate public engagement in the policy aspect of election campaigns.

That said, respondents' views as expressed through Vote Compass can add a meaningful dimension to our understanding of public attitudes and an innovative new medium for self-expression.

Ensuring that the public has a decipherable voice in the affairs of government is a critical function of a robust democracy.

Online surveys are inherently prone to selection bias but statisticians have long been able to correct for this (given the availability of certain variables) by drawing on population estimates such as Census micro-data.

The ABC applies sophisticated weighting techniques to the data to control for the selection effects of the sample, enabling us to make statistical inferences about the Australian population with a high degree of confidence.

How can you stop people from trying to game the system?

There are multiple safeguards in place to ensure the authenticity of each record in the dataset.

Vote Compass does not make its protocols in this regard public so as not to aid those that might attempt to exploit the system, but among standard safeguards such as IP address logging and cookie tracking, it also uses time codes and a series of other measures to prevent users from gaming the system.